Professor Diane Speed

Professor Emerita Diane Speed, Office of the Dean
BA (Hons) Sydney MA (Hons) Sydney MTh (Hons) Sydney PhD London; LSDA Australian Music Examinations Board

Diane retired as the Dean and CEO of the Sydney College of Divinity on 30 September 2021. She started in the role at the beginning of 2008.

During her remarkable tenure, SCD saw the birth of:

The Korean School of Theology
The Graduate Research School
The Centre for Gospels and Acts Research
SCD Press
The Learning and Teaching Conferences and Book Series
The Theology Research Network
SCD as a self-accrediting institution with TEQSA

Diane’s previous working life was based in the Department of English at the University of Sydney, where she was engaged in teaching, research, and supervision, alongside administration in the Faculty, and occasional teaching and supervision for the Department of Studies in Religion. In the United Kingdom she has also been an Honorary Associate at the University of Liverpool and a Visiting Fellow at Robinson College Cambridge. Her particular expertise is in medieval thought and texts, with particular interests in biblical paraphrase and commentary, romance, hagiography, exempla, and manuscript culture, underlying all of which is an abiding concern with historical theology.

Diane’s outside interests focus mainly on lay teaching and pastoring. She has preached in Anglican churches in Sydney and Presbyterian churches in Korea. She belongs to the Wellspring community and co-convenes the NSW Ecumenical Council’s Theological Reflection Commission. She enjoys time with her friends and her cat, opera, ballet, concerts, and reading.

Publications

Books

2002	Honourable Engagement: St Mark’s Church Darling Point: The First 150 Years By Withycombe and Susan Mary Woolcock. Foreword by M. L. Loane, KBE, Additional Material by Diane Speed, Index by Robert S. M. Withycombe, ed. Diane Speed, Sydney: St Mark’s Church Darling Point, 2002. 263 pp.
1993	Medieval English Romances 3rd edn, Durham Medieval Texts 8, Durham: University of Durham, 1993. 1st and 2nd edn, Sydney: University of Sydney, 1987 and 1989. 460 pp.
1992	Essays on Early England in Honour of Audrey Meaney Principal editor, with Sue Spinks and Susan Mary Withycombe, Parergon ns 10.2 (special edn), Sydney, 1992. 178 pp.

Book Chapters and Refereed Articles

2010	‘A Text for Its Time: The Sanctorale of the Early South English Legendary’, Chapter 6 of The Texts and Contexts of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108 Ed. Kimberley K. Bell and Julie Nelson Couch, Medieval and Renaissance Authors and Texts 6, Leiden: Brill, 2010, pp. 117-136.
2009	Chaucer’s ‘Monk’s Tale’ and ‘Nun’s Priest’s Tale’: An Annotated Bibliography 1900-2000, The Chaucer Bibliographies Monk’s Tale Annotations to 1919 and 1984-1998, in Peter Goodall, ed. Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 2009.

Only a limited number of publications are listed here.